A day out
Anthony Grayling was in Seattle yesterday – yesterday only – for a talk at Town Hall on The Good Book. It was a great talk. He does what he calls footnotes, which remind me of the nested notes David Foster Wallace did in some essays, a note within a note within a note. One example: he was telling a story about how he got interested in philosophy via classical Greek philosophy via Greek mythology via a book his grandmother sent him at school when he was seven. This paideia was embedded in a story about his brother which was embedded in a larger Bildung story about distant parents and being sent to school very young. The brother story was that his brother was five years older and a prefect, so there was a gulf between them; one day his brother had to punish him for a formal (though not substantive) infraction; the brother had the Greek mythology book (wrapped in brown paper) under his arm at the time, bringing it from the post; the punishment was that Anthony had to memorize the first page by the next morning; he was so enthralled that he’d memorized the whole book by then. The footnote came at the very beginning: an older boy sent young Anthony to fetch his cricket bat, which involved him in the formal infraction of opening another boy’s locker. The footnote was about cricket.
All this (and more) was a matter of perhaps two minutes.
It was all like that.
The audience was gripped.
There were questions at the end. One was the one about “what can atheists offer to replace the community and collective activity of religion and church etc?” “Look around you,” Grayling said. Well quite. There we all were.
I had tea with him before the talk. It was immense fun. He’s working on another play (following “Grace”) which will be produced next year. He’s the new president of the British Humanist Association. He’s about ten people in one.
“”Look around you,” Grayling said. Well quite. There we all were.”
Thats just fabulous.
Great story. Enviable talk.
Maybe that’s what partially defines the Gnus; a sense of community.
“There were questions at the end. One was the one about “what can atheists offer to replace the community and collective activity of religion and church etc?” “Look around you,” Grayling said. Well quite. There we all were”
I think this is a serious question and Anthony’s answer was not good, nor that of the two previous commenters!
Here is Martin Sheen on Desert Island Discs with a quote that illustrates what we lack:
“We’re going to hear ‘How can I keep from singing?’. It is my favourite hymn. It has been a great source inspiration for me particularly in very dark times. It is a reaffirmation of the cherished belief I have in faith. This hymn speaks to that in a deeply personal way. <b>In the worst of times there still is so much to give thanks and praise for.</b>”
Now I would say that we would agree with that statement, but we don’t have any shared way of stating it, or joining together to do it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zzn2c/Desert_Island_Discs_Martin_Sheen/
starts at 1:45, quote above at 10.:25
Bah, I should have gone, but I didn’t find out about it until right before the talk, and I had too much homework. So sad :\
Uh-uh, only believers can do community. If we try, we fail and it’s called tribalism.
Surprising, I know; it really ought to work, considering that atheism is, in fact, a religion.
As to why it’s impossible, I think it’s a combination of our miserable failure to police the private lives of our adherents, which is utterly necessary for any sense of community, and the fact that the kind of cohesion required can only be achieved by life forms that are based on carbon, not invective.
I see where you are coming from, and while I agree with that statement, I don’t feel compelled to share it with any but people I am already close with. Public displays of thanks and praise I can do without. I do miss the singing, as well, but I can’t stand the lyrics.
Now, I am envious. I should so life to have been there. Instead, I was at the doctor’s a continent away. Ah, well, maybe, someday. But he is, isn’t he? A whole host of people, all under one wrapper!
Felix, I think that’s all wrong. We aren’t a religion. We are just…people. And if people want to get together and share whatever matters to them, they’ll find a way to do it. Saying that “we don’t have a shared way of stating it” is like saying that we don’t have hymns (with words) and prayers and liturgies and agreed things to be happy about. No thanks. When I join in a hymn, it’s because I like the tune and it’s fun singing along. But leave the words out. Tricky things, words. I don’t trust them. “Shared ways” can only be for the moment. Nothing we could put in a book.
I meant to add
I am vastly, deeply underwhelmed.
@Felix
You do realize that this is someone’s subjective experience ?
It may give Mr. Sheen great comfort and it may give you great comfort that Mr. Sheen derives great comfort from this but no insights about reality can be gleaned from this tidbit.
About the only thing this example proves is that we lack an appreciation for the same music.
Stewart @ #5:
So what is wrong with belief, and with community based on either shared belief or lack of substantial disagreement?
Know thyself: the first commandment. I think that the saddest situation one can be in is to be possessed of a closed mind, and of not just not having much personal insight, but of not wanting to gain any, or of being scared of it. Religious fundamentalists in my experience are classic examples of this.
I think that the only shared belief of atheists is that one does not need gods in order to have an enjoyable life. In fact gods and their priests tend to get in the way.
From what I read in Ophelia’s link, that is what Grayling’s book is about.
Must get hold of a copy.
Sorry Jen – maybe I should have done more to alert Seattleites.
But I didn’t get to have breakfast with Richard, so I don’t feel too sorry for you! :- )
Ian,
Sorry, did some of my sarcasm miss the mark? I was adopting the tone of people who hate me without knowing me. Whether or not there’s something wrong with belief depends entirely on what is believed and why.
Oh come now! One, that wasn’t the whole of the answer, and two, you weren’t there, so you can’t really tell how apt it was. I was, so I can tell you: it was apt. It would have been apt for the evening immediately preceding, when a bunch of people ate up Howard Jacobson’s story-telling abilities, too.
Jacobson is a great friend of Anthony’s, and that too is apt.
Anthony’s answer was good, because it was true, and at least some of the audience recognized its truth. There was that kind of stir or murmur or jostle that conveys recognition of truth. It was true because people were intensely involved in a common activity – listening and thinking. (Anthony and I talked about this a bit over tea, apropos of Shakespeare, and the difficulties of memorization, and the fact that oral cultures have listening abilities that literate cultures don’t have in such a developed way. He did a wonderful little thing with the first part of the “To be” speech, showing me how the consonants link up in a mnemonic way.)
That wasn’t all he said; he said there is music, and relationships, and nature, and the aesthetic sense; he said there are many things, which we gather separately, so they’re not a straight equivalent of church, but they don’t need to be.
He certainly wasn’t unserious. On the contrary.
I met him at the Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne last year, and it was one of the highlights of that weekend – which is saying something, given how much I enjoyed meeting people like Russell Blackford and PZ Myers and hearing them (and, of course, Richard Dawkins) speak.
But it’s funny how, although we gnus mention his books and talks and comments all the time, I’ve rarely ever seen him attacked by the anti-gnus, who seem to conveniently forget he exists and instead only go for the ‘easy targets’ like Dawkins, PZ, Hitchens, Harris, Jerry Coyne and Ophelia – despite the fact he’s just as (if not, on occasions, more so) critical of everything the fawning appeasers insist (in their obsequious fashion) that we’re not allowed to say is bad about religion.
Probably because they’re aware that if they did he’d tear each of them apart without breaking a sweat or raising his voice to a point beyond that of a parent telling their child a bedtime story.
Mind you, my sense of community was slightly marred by the fact that the guy sitting next to me with (fortunately) an empty seat between kept hitting himself in the head repeatedly, and also turning to peer at me for no obvious reason. But then that can happen in church, too, can’t it.
Wowbagger – quite. As I’ve mentioned, one faction of anti-gnus has even invited him to be a guest on a cruise next autumn, and he’s doing it. They doubtless don’t realize he answers to the name of Gnu. If they’re clever (and polite) they won’t pick a fight with him, and all will be well.
I guess you’ll have to go to church to find out, won’t you?
Eric, maybe you should go on that cruise. Seriously! It takes in Nova Scotia. You could just hop on.
Heehee, Stewart. I think I’ll just extrapolate, thanks.
Had you met him before, Ophelia? Pardon me if that’s already answered upthread somewhere and I missed it. Even apart from his extraordinary intellect, isn’t he a lovely guy?
Russell, no, I hadn’t – and I’m quite bowled over that he wanted to. He’s a very lovely guy!
Interestingly enough, given the audience member’s question, I’ve had a couple atheist friends complain about Grayling’s book being formatted and titled as a secular or humanist “Bible” (I think it’s “secular” in Britain and “humanist” in the U.S.) They argue it will continue to lead people to think secularism/humanism is “just another religion.” Seems like nitpicking to me.
Anyway, glad to see you enjoyed, Ophelia. He’s speaking for CFI in DC tonight. I’d love to host him in NYC.
Stewart,
Ah, sarcasm. Can be tricky, and I see your comment differently now.
Isms are demanding enough, but asms are touch and go; something else again. Real land mines. ;-)
Grayling’s answer on community was a good response, given the question. But I think it’s a false issue.
I think of myself as a member of the community of scientists, of the community of mathematicians, of the community of people who think deeply about issues. And religion and atheism are among the topics discussed within those communities. But I don’t think of myself as part of any community of atheists and agnostics.
He does seem like a very nice and modest person. (Perhaps the anti-gnus don’t attack him because in their narrative gnus are gnasty by definition, I don’t know.) And his writing is just so lucid. It’s something a person like me, who wouldn’t meet Hoffman’s quality standards, can enjoy and at least hope to understand.
About the atheist community thing. I live in a country where 80% of people are members of the Evangelic Lutheran Church but less than 2% attend its services regulary. I don’t have a figure for people who are active in religious communities, but I think 5% would be a fair guess. It’s possible that we’re just not that big on community up here, but nothing has really replaced religion in that sense. Certainly not atheist communities.
By the way, has anyone ever read Grayling’s Very Short Introduction to Bertrand Russell? I’ve always wanted to pick it up but never find the time.
@Hertta
” but nothing has really replaced religion in that sense”
And do you think that the community is less close due to that?
I would imagine that if every got together on Sunday morning for a sing-song they would all know more about each other, and be more concerned and neighbourly.
And when you were facing dark-times, there would be a mention from the preacher, kind words from your neighbours and the shared singing of a special song to raise your spirits and give you strength.
Going to the local Astronomy society meeting for a talk on pulsars doesn’t seem to offer the same support.
Ian,
I suppose that means I was some kind of accidental Poe. After a while you can predict in your sleep how certain groups will attack you. Maybe we need to improve our image by publishing a compendium of polite writing by Gnu Atheists. The novelty value would be hard to beat.
I’ve seen many communities based around popular culture, technology, geography, sport, in fact I’m not sure that “what can replace religion as a source of community” is even a well-formed question as it seems to presuppose that religion is the sole or strongest provider of community.
I’m sure the community is less close, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s also means the society is less separated into different communities based on what people believe and where and what they worship. The children go to same schools, people watch the same TV-channels (there aren’t that many) and read the same newspapers.
And I can’t think of anyone I know who wouldn’t be horrified at the thought of having their problems highlighted in front of our neighbors and having them sing a special song. Oh, no. A cultural thing, probably.
We’re also not that big on charity. We rather pay taxes.
Michael De Dora @ #23
Yes I know more than a few who don’t like it for similar reasons, I think. It’s distasteful to use this appalling book as a template. I take the whole ‘Bible’ thing as an amusing contrast, and a convenient structure, for a new anthology of reason. I should withhold judgement until I’ve read it; perhaps it is an abomination! But at the moment, if anyone gets the benefit of the doubt, it’s certainly Grayling.
I think the “what kind of community can atheism offer” question is taking the wrong approach anyway. Do people really think that one Sunday, every single churchgoer will wake up at the same time and say, “Well gee, I guess this god business really doesn’t make any sense, does it… but now what will I do with my time?” And yet, that’s really the only scenario I can think of where this would be a major concern.
On an individual level, each person must ask themselves how they find community. On a societal level, communities grow organically. As interest in and respect for religion wanes, other things will fill the void. Now, it’s an open question whether those things will be as effective at doing the job (one of the only nice things you’ll hear me say about religion is that it is one activity that gets people from incredibly diverse walks of life under one roof as [at least nominal] allies) but one can’t really engage in too much hand-wringing over this, since deliberate attempts to manipulate the outcome can only go so far.
That said, efforts to create a more rich atheist community are welcome. I just don’t think anybody ought to be losing any sleep over it. As long as religion’s influence is chipped away at by reason and argument (as opposed to, say, legislated out of existence by a communist dictatorship) then it is impossible for there to be a sudden void that must be filled. People will find something to do with their Sundays, trust me…
Well, I suppose we could ask Ophelia (if she’s not going to go to church) whether she’d rather have tea with Grayling or the people who wrote the bible.
James @ #33,
I remember in the days when I used to attend our local CofE church fellowship, the preacher would often be up in front of us all agonising about how many young people of our age who lived locally and who could be there were instead off at the beach, watching sporting events, and other such heathen activities.
In the more religious households, no book other than the Bible was permissible reading; no music other than hymns; no activity whose purpose was simply pleasure and joy in being alive. The same puritanism applies in other religions such as Islam as well, indicating that the straiteners are empowered by restrictions on happiness and feel threatened by it. This is possibly because they are all control freaks who are upset when people act according to their own wishes and desires, and want to force everybody into the same mold, the better to rule over them.
They already have.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. Finland and Sweden are reported to have the highest per capita numbers of organizations, associations and clubs in the world. (That goes to what Grayling and dirigible were saying: let’s not take the religious definition of ‘community’ for granted). But you’re right that most people don’t seem to need a replacement for the kind of community that gets together on Sundays to sing songs and to get in each other’s business.
Despite being an atheist, I actually went back to church for a couple of years (as a Unitarian-Universalist). I never really got that whole ‘community’ thing. Or, rather, it was like every other Church I’d been a member of… That is, it had its social circles of ‘insiders’ and I kept being an outsider. Even though I did try to get involved in various groups in which I was interested.
So, except for a few friends in the church I had known socially from outside the church, there was no big community support and it was very difficult to get involved with anything. And once I discovered there was a lot of hidden anti-atheist bigotry (and I was clear I was an atheist from the day I joined), even with the UUs, I gave up on the whole ‘community bigger than our shared superstition’ aspect of churches.
OTOH, I have found social organizations that do replace church. You have to do a bit more work to find them. They tend to be narrowly focused. But they are there.
Right – which would be a very mixed thing.
I’ve been agreeing, in general, that the kind of community religious attendance offers is very hard to replace with secular equivalents all in one place at one moment…I’m now thinking I’ve been agreeing a bit too easily. 1) Not all believers love going to church/temple/mosque, to say the least. Some hate it. 2) All that knowing more about each other is like living in a small town. Yes it’s close and (when working well) supportive, but it’s also stifling and intrusive. The two things are interlocked. It’s not the case that everybody wants a tight community based on church/mosque attendance or its equivalent.
Again – not universally attractive. Far from it.
My personal belief is that community/catharsis is the entire point of modern religion. At least I think when people say that they “feel” the presence of god, that’s what they’re feeling. And that feeling is real. It’s just misattributed. And while Atheism “can” technically replace it, it’s often that it’s not atheism itself that replaces it for atheists. It might be concerts, or some sort of focused get together, or it can be games, or whatever.
One thing that really pisses me off about religion is when they try and monopolize this feeling, aka post #35 above. It’s why I don’t full-out oppose religion per se…I think said catharsis/community are by and large absurdly important human needs (although it’s not the case for everybody), and people should get it where they can. The bigger problem I have with religion is that in a lot of cases I feel like people are NOT getting it, for the reasons that Ophelia mentioned above..they’re more concerned with their social status in the group rather than the shared emotions of the group…and as such, they tend to double-down on the stories, and as such I think that a lot of the negative behavior that stems from religion in our society…gay bashing, religious exclusivism, anti-woman, etc..is because of this.
There’s a saying that’s pretty popular in more conservative circles. Fake it until you make it. That is, act and show that you’re the most pious person around, and eventually “God” will come down and speak to you. Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t work that way. Which means they double down again..and again..and again. And the sad thing is that each time they’re moving AWAY from where they need and want to go.
I apologize if people see that as being a sort of woo. I personally don’t think it is. But that’s my major beef with at least modern American Christianity, and why I think it’s spiraling to extremes.
When I sat down to write my deconversion story on my blog, I realized that the very first step had absolutely nothing to do with doubt… it was just that I simply didn’t like doing churchy activities with churchy people. I didn’t like it, I didn’t fit in with them.
Some of that was, in retrospect, specifically skepticism-related (e.g. I like to ask open questions about even my most cherished beliefs, and I see that as an affirmation rather than an attack — which is NOT how people in the Mormon church I attended saw it!). But much of it wasn’t. I just didn’t like these people, I didn’t like the music, I didn’t like the approach to life. Blech.
If I had fit in socially, I probably still would have figured out the scam. But it could have easily taken an extra decade or two. I know for some people, that final loss of faith can be devastating. For me, by the time I lost my faith altogether, it was “Good riddance!”. I spent quite a bit of time at least nominally believing, while simultaneously being all like, “God, I hate this shit…” What a relief to discover that it didn’t just seem stupid and pointless and irritating, it actually was stupid and pointless and irritating!
Exactly. I had that same gut feeling, always. I’ve thought of it as mostly just a gut feeling, but maybe that’s not quite right – maybe there was something a little more reason-based behind it. I hated the confinement and formality and boredom…but that wasn’t all of it. The confinement and formality and boredom were about something, and I wasn’t attracted to what they were about. Mind you, I would have hated a performance of Hamlet at the same age, so maybe I’m just fantasizing about my reaction. (We didn’t go often, and never after I was 8, when it was a 5 mile trip into town.)
Michael, yes, I’ve read it. Very good, I think, and quite thorough for such a short book. Also his VSI to Wittgenstein. Love his ending of the latter where he says that “the journey through Wittgenstein’s circuitous, metaphorical, sometimes opaque negations and suggestions is long; but the distance it takes one is short.”
Re the cruise — if I could get over the awful idea of being cooped up with a lot of objectionable people in a relatively small space, I might manage it. That said, it would be nice to meet Grayling, so many of whose books I have read with interest and pleasure.
US culture is very different from Scandinavia.
Participation in community groups — be it the Kiwanis, Elks, community choruses and bands, or any other activity you can think of — has dramatically dropped over the past couple of decades.
Because people have so many more free-time options that they had before, including TV, the internet, etc., the role of community-gathering groups is very much on the wane.
I’m not sure that it’s all that necessary to have an atheistic replacement for church. I have family, friends, activities, hobbies, 300 satellite TV channels (half of which admittedly are shopping channels), the entire interwebz, hiking trails, golf courses, a house and garden to attend to, pets, libraries, book stores, theaters, museums, restaurants, a camping trailer…
I don’t perceive the “hole” that needs to be filled. Maybe it’s just me.
BTW: I’m in the middle of Grayling’s “Ideas that Matter”.
I am green with envy at your day with him.
A tremendously lucid writer. Clear as a bell. The anti-Hoffmann, if ever there was one.
Eric, well Grayling’s wife Katie is going too, and she sounds extraordinarily interesting – she’s a very succesful writer herself. That’s two very pleasant people. The hosts will surely be motivated to live up to their guests, so…
It might well be worth doing.
About “community” and whatnot…
I find it interesting how the more secularized first-world countries tend to have more egalitarian income distributions, stronger social safety nets, lower rates of various kinds of social dysfunction, and spend a higher percentage of GDP on foreign aid than more religious countries.
In the sociological literature on secularization, such correlations are often explained by saying that when people feel more secure—not in concretely dire straits, and not very disadvantaged relatively in terms of keeping up with the Joneses, they feel less need for religion. When people feel poor, disadvantaged, and threatened, they turn to religion for the concrete benefits that religious communities provide their members and for the emotional benefits of thinking they’re part of some big worthwhile thing even if their lives concretely suck.
On the other hand, if a correlation is found between religion and something good, it’s typically inferred that religion actually caused that good thing.
Heads religion wins—if it’s correlated with something good, that’s evidence it’s good.
Tails it not only doesn’t lose, but may even win—if it’s correlated with something bad, it’s must be a good response to something bad caused by something else.
I don’t buy it. I strongly suspect that the bad things correlated with religiosity are actually caused by religiosity to a considerable extent. Irreligiosity is actually good for societies in some very basic ways.
I don’t know how to make this precise or quantify it, but I have to think that irreligious people tend to be more Utilitarian, and it shows in their politics. They are less obsessed with individual virtue for its own sake, or for benefits in an afterlife, and more concerned with effective social policies that will actually make life suck less in ways that they can understand in real-world terms.
A very common religious response to social problems is to cast them in terms of something like sin, and to assume that the only solution is to fight sin by making people more religious, so they’ll be less sinful. Religious people’s efforts to improve the world are inefficient, because they’re mistaken about the causes of problems and the range of reasonable solutions. They actually think contributing time and money to churches is helping the world, and it’s mostly not. It’s mostly an inefficient bureaucracy pursuing the wrong goals, e.g., saving souls by spreading a certain theology, or pursuing worthwhile goals in inefficient ways, e.g., sending missionaries to impoverished countries to feed people but also to indoctrinate them with worse-than-useless bullshit and prevent them from using birth control.
In a secularized country, it’s generally recognized that the churches are not going to improve the world much— because they’re bad at it and/or just because that’s not a live option in secular and largely irreligious country where they don’t have enough power and money—and that governments must do it with reality-based policies based on roughly utilitarian principles.
Irreligious people realize that religion isn’t going to fix social problems, and are more willing to pay higher taxes to a government that will do what is necessary.
Even religious people in very secular countries realize that, to a greater extent than in very religious countries—they realize that they are not running the show, and are not going to be running the show any time soon, and that they can’t hope to get society as a whole to fix social problems by becoming religious and doing things the religious way any time soon. Meanwhile, there are real problems that need addressing, and they don’t want the irreligious people to get away with not paying churches or paying taxes to do socially beneficial things. They don’t want unvirtuous, uncharitable irreligious people to get a free ride on charitable religious people.
Irreligious people generally know that they and other people are pretty selfish, and that nothing is going to change that. They understand that it’s difficult to part with your very own money to help others just out of the goodness of your heart, and it’s easier to vote for taxes, so that not only you but everybody else who can afford to has to do it, too. It’s a commons problem, and there is no solution to it based on voluntary charity. You can admire charity as a moral virtue all you want, a la Christian moralizing, but that’s just not going to make many people actually be very virtuous and charitable. You need a social contract that says that everybody has to pay their dues, whether they’re personally particularly virtuous or not.
I’m oversimplifying a lot here, of course. There are a lot of relatively progressive religious people who realize that being religious doesn’t make people all that much more virtuous in practice, such that charity can solve commons problems and thus social problems. They too understand the need for a social contract based on more than voluntary charity.
Likewise, there are irreligious people who are libertarians, and basically don’t accept that commons problems are real, important, and insoluble by purely voluntary means.
Still, I think that there are important correlations there. Irreligious people are more likely to be more utilitarian, and less oriented toward extreme individualism, emphasizing irreducible individual rights and personal morality over effective strategies for promoting social goods.
Religious moral rhetoric largely serves as a sideshow to derail any serious discussion of where rights come from, how rights are justified, and whether a system of rights can be justified in other-than-Utilitarian terms. There’s an unholy alliance between people who focus on individualism for basically libertarian ideological reasons and people who focus on individualist morality for religious reasons.
What they are united by is an opposition to utilitarianism and collectivism at a political level, even if they disagree radically at other levels.
(E.g., some religious people quite sincerely want what’s best for everybody on the whole, and aren’t libertarians, but do not accept that a secular government is the a particularly good means to utilitarian ends—they don’t want to undermine the power of churches, or the sense that Christian charity is tremendously important. They may even recognize that Christian charity isn’t particularly efficient or effective, but fear that a secular government would be more efficient in achieving the wrong set of goals—e.g., promoting “sins” by paying for birth control and abortions, and leaving out the religious messages that they think are beneficial in the big picture and the long run. They might want higher taxes if they thought the money would be funneled through religious charities, which would help people both concretely and spiritually.)
That sort of thinking is a major reason I’m a gnu. Most people in the U.S. don’t even know the term “commons problem”—they don’t have the most basic vocabulary for discussing this sort of thing clearly—and I think religion is a major reason for that. We’re not going to have sane, effective, reason-based social policies until we have more sane people, who can intelligently discuss what’s good and how to achieve it.
I just watched the Fox News interview where Grayling took a more ‘positive’ rather than anti-religious approach.
The really interesting thing about this was that he did it without resorting to attacking the gnus (well he’s one of us so he wouldn’t!). This feels strange when you see it because it has almost become standard over the past few years that advocating ‘positive atheism’ requires dissing the ‘extremist’ anti-religious atheists.
Re Grayling and Hoffman…
I hope that Grayling doesn’t just let Hoffman’s recent extreme assholery pass, even if Hoffman is nice to him personally. Hoffman is viciously misrepresenting people like Grayling, and Grayling should notice, say so, and eviscerate him. (Politely, but quite firmly and decisively.)
Grayling should call Hoffman out and read him the riot act. I think he’s morally obligated to do so, he owes it to the people he agrees with, even if Hoffman has not targeted him personally.
Hoffman is going around being a dishonest, destructive, divisive asshole, and he’s the Provost of Kurtz’s Institute for Science and Human Values.
Grayling should not have anything to do with ISHV if he’s not going draw a line in the sand and say this shit is wrong. If he’s not going to push back, hard, he should keep his distance from ISHV, and let it marginalize itself by alienating him along with everyone else gnu or gnuish. He shouldn’t endorse its fledgling brand if it’s going to be so clearly the prentiously condescending, bitterly gnu-hating wing of humanism.
Grayling has great stature, and with great stature comes great responsibility. If he just plays nice with Hoffman, I’ll lose a lot of respect for him.
It sucks that Hoffman, an invective-based life form if ever there was one, seems to be trying to get as much attention as possible for being as viciously anti-gnu as possible, and that it may be an effective marketing strategy for ISHV—trying to attract all the Humanists who like seeing gnus bashed.
If Grayling just doesn’t want to give him the attention of publicly calling him out, I could understand that. But if that’s how it stands, then he should perhaps privately read Hoffman the riot act, and quietly have nothing further to do with ISHV, full stop.
Oh I don’t think that’s right, Paul. For that to make sense Grayling would have to devote a lot of time to following Hoffmann’s blog, and why would he do that?
Zinger.
Sigmund – no, exactly – he wouldn’t and doesn’t, naturally. The first question from the audience at Town Hall was “do you disagree with Richard Dawkins on anything?” The answer was: only one thing: as a scientist, Richard thinks it’s important always to say we don’t know for certain, while I say that reason is all or nothing. On a scale of 1 to 7 Richard is a 6.9 atheist and I’m a 7.
Most amusing. He said it very sweetly, as always.
I guess that’s why we need moderates like Dawkins, reigning in the hot-headed extremists like Grayling!
You mentioned, “I’m invited to the How the light gets in thingy at Hay on Wye. I just might do it.”
Please let us know. We’d like to have tea with you! :-)
What I’m coming to understand is that we have Four Horsemen and that Grayling’s tactics qualify him as our Trojan Horseman.
My two cents on “community:”
Ophelia at #38 pointed out part of what I was feeling. I think there’s too much worrying about whether the community aspect of religions can be replicated in other contexts and not enough questioning as to what community really means in its religious context. Briefly put, as others have said, we all belong to certain kinds of communities other than the religious ones: professional, social (however that gets defined), by language (in some situations), hobbies, etc. I can’t think offhand of any kind of community more likely to contain unwilling members than a religious one. I’m up for suggestions on that.
The other thing Ophelia beat me to was mentioning the boredom. I’ve never been a believer, but before that became something I could properly articulate, the thing that really killed me about religion was the boredom of rituals that repeated and repeated. I have no doubt many religious rituals can be very impressive for a first-timer, but how many of us would retain the same favourite movie if we had to watch it all the way through every day of our lives, or even just once a week? The only advantage in getting to know the routine off-by-heart was that one could reassure oneself that there was only “so much” left to go the further along the damned thing was. I suspect that to this day I could probably be induced into a better mood by exposure to the bits that came right at the end, when I knew it would all be over soon – till the next time (which there hasn’t been for several decades now).
Yes…
I have this memory of staring at the hymn numbers in the desperation of boredom. It was an Episcopalian church (CofE; Anglican); it had some rectangular window-shaped item on some of the side pillars with cryptic numbers in a vertical list – at some point I was told those were the hymn numbers. My gaze would settle on them the way one’s gaze settles on one nasty item after another while one’s teeth are being cleaned, desperately searching for something pleasing to look at.
God how I hated it. I don’t have the faintest whiff of a ghost of a shadow of a memory of anything good. It might as well have been the farking dentist.
http://www.trinityprinceton.org/
It was (and is) on Mercer Street right where Alexander Street joins it and ends. We lived two houses down Alexander Street. Einstein lived around the corner on Mercer Street, a couple of houses down in the direction of Trenton. My school was on the other side of Trinity; my sister and I used to go through the grounds of Trinity on our way to the school. She rode her bike and I tried to keep up with her on foot, whining all the way. She was nearly 11 years older. :- )
I clicked on “Something for Everyone,” and have now been reminded of Eric Idle on MPFC concluding his run-down of sporting events soon to be broadcast with “And for those of you who don’t like sport – there’s sport.”
From the pictures it looks all…Vicar of Dibley only not funny. All warm and cuddly. It wasn’t like that when I was a tad, in 1908 – it was a church, not a summer camp.
Felix – I don’t know. They were going to get back to me. Since they haven’t, I suspect they’re not going to.
At the age I was when I had no say in the matter, honour would have compelled me to say “you showed me yours, now I’ll show you mine.” I think this is the very first time I even thought of searching for it. The link is to the “history” page, where you can actually see the venue in which what I still consider my most traumatic experience took place. Picture taken from upstairs in the ladies’ gallery, so below that point and to the right is where the male members of my family used to sit. http://www.khc.org.au/node/2
Yes I hadn’t looked for mine, either. Things are supposed to vanish when we’re not using them any more.
I think that principle only holds true in relation to parts of the body.
And even that requires geological time scales.
That’s what I meant by “supposed to”………supposed as in imagined. Solipsism.